Redfin

Last updated
Redfin Corporation
Company type Public
Industry Real estate
Founded2004;20 years ago (2004)
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Founders
  • David Eraker
  • Michael Dougherty
  • David Selinger
Headquarters
Seattle, Washington
,
U.S.
Area served
100+ markets in the United States and Canada
Key people
Glenn Kelman (CEO)
Bridget Frey (CTO)
Chris Nielsen (CFO)
Services Real estate agent
Broker
Mortgage origination
RevenueDecrease2.svg US$976 million (2023)
Increase2.svgUS$−218 million (2023)
Increase2.svgUS$−130 million (2023)
Total assets Decrease2.svgUS$1.153 billion (2023)
Total equity Decrease2.svgUS$2 million (2023)
Number of employees
4,693 (December 2023)
Subsidiaries RentPath
Bay Equity Home Loans
Title Forward Settlement Solutions
Website redfin.com
Footnotes /references
[1]
Redfin headquarters are in the Hill7 Building, in South Lake Union, Seattle Southlakeunion.jpg
Redfin headquarters are in the Hill7 Building, in South Lake Union, Seattle

Redfin Corporation, based in Seattle, provides residential real estate brokerage and mortgage origination services. The company operates in more than 100 markets in the United States and Canada. [1] In 2023, the company had a 0.76% market share in the United States by number of units sold and had an average of 1,776 lead agents. [1]

Contents

History

Redfin was founded in 2004 by David Eraker, Michael Dougherty, and David Selinger. Eraker had dropped out of medical school at the University of Washington for a career in software design and Dougherty received degrees in electrical engineering and international studies from Yale University. [2] [3] David Selinger, an alumnus of Stanford University who had previously led the research and development arm of Amazon's data mining and personalization team, joined Redfin as the third founder and CTO. Selinger helped build Redfin's mapping and real estate data analytics engine. [4]

In January 2006, Redfin named Glenn Kelman as CEO. [5] The company's website began to show available homes on an interactive map in 2007. [6]

In 2012, Redfin began an automatic agent rating system. After it drew criticism for using inaccurate data, the system was discontinued. [7]

In June 2017, the company began Redfin Now, a home flipping division. [8]

On July 28, 2017, Redfin became a public company via an initial public offering, raising $138 million. [9]

In June 2019, Redfin began allowing buyers to submit offers on homes listed by Redfin's selling agents without using a buyer's agent. [10] A month later, the company partnered with Opendoor, whereby visitors to the Redfin website can request an offer to buy their houses from Opendoor. [11]

In June 2022, the company announced layoffs of 8% of its staff. [12]

In November 2022, the company announced additional layoffs of 862 people, or 13% of its staff, and the wind down of its Redfin Now home flipping unit. [13]

Acquisitions

DateAcquiredDescriptionCostSource
October 2014 Walk Score Analysis and apartment search toolN/A [14] [15]
April 2021 RentPath Owner of Apartment Guide, Rent.com, Lovely, and Rentals.com$608 million [16]
January 2022Bay Equity Home LoansMortgage lender$137.8 million [17] [18]

Fines and litigation

In May 2007, Redfin was fined $50,000 by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, and was forced to shut down reviews of homes on the market on its website, prohibited under multiple listing service rules. [19]

In November 2020, a class-action lawsuit by several fair housing organizations accused Redfin of violating the Fair Housing Act by offering fewer services to homebuyers and sellers in minority communities and not offering to sell lower-priced homes because of the lower profits on such sales. [20] [21] [22] In 2022, the company paid $4 million to settle the lawsuit, changed its policies, and implemented a new internal monitoring system. [23] [24]

Awards

In July 2006, Inman News awarded Redfin the Innovator Award for the Most Innovative Business Model. [25]

In May 2010, Redfin won the Seattle 2.0 award for "Best Startup". [26]

In October 2012, Redfin was named one of The DIGITAL 100: World's Most Valuable Private Tech Companies by Business Insider . [27]

In July 2013, Inman News awarded Redfin an award for "Most Innovative Brokerage or Franchise". [28]

In June 2014, Seattle Business magazine recognized Redfin as the best company to work for in Seattle in the Large Companies category. [29]

In December 2019, Redfin was named one of the top tech companies to work for in Seattle by Hired.com. [30]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Association of Realtors</span> American trade association for real estate brokers

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is an American trade association for those who work in the real estate industry. As of December 2023, it had over 1.5 million members, making it the largest trade association in the United States including NAR's institutes, societies, and councils, involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries. The organization holds a U.S. trademark over the term "Realtor". NAR also functions as a self-regulatory organization for real estate brokerage. The organization is headquartered in Chicago.

Windermere Real Estate is a real estate company founded in 1972 and based in Seattle, Washington. It is a privately held company and is the largest regional real estate company in the Western U.S., with over 300 offices and 6,500 agents.

In finance, flipping is a term used to describe purchasing an asset and quickly reselling it for profit.

Racial steering refers to the practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. The term is used in the context of de facto residential segregation in the United States, and is often divided into two broad classes of conduct:

  1. Advising customers to purchase homes in particular neighborhoods on the basis of race.
  2. Failing, on the basis of race, to show, or to inform buyers of homes that meet their specifications.
<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zillow</span> American real estate website

Zillow Group, Inc., or simply Zillow, is an American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006 by co-executive chairmen Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Microsoft spin-off Expedia; Spencer Rascoff, a co-founder of Hotwire.com; David Beitel, Zillow's current chief technology officer; and Kristin Acker, Zillow's current technology leadership advisor.

Move, Inc. is a real estate listing company based in Santa Clara, California. The company operates the Move Network of real estate websites, the largest of which is Realtor.com. Move has a longstanding partnership with the National Association of Realtors, the real estate industry's largest trade association, for operating Realtor.com.

A real estate trend is any consistent pattern or change in the general direction of the real estate industry which, over the course of time, causes a statistically noticeable change. This phenomenon can be a result of the economy, a change in mortgage rates, consumer speculations, or other fundamental and non-fundamental reasons.

Equity Residential is a United States-based publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in apartments.

HomeServices of America is the United States' largest residential real estate services company, based on closed transactions. The company provides real estate brokerage services, mortgage loan origination, franchising, title insurance/escrow and closing services, home warranties, property insurance, casualty insurance, and relocation services.

Walk Score, a subsidiary of Redfin, provides walkability analysis and apartment search tools. Its flagship product is a large-scale, public access walkability index that assigns a numerical walkability score to any address in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Walk Score is a type of automated efficiency model focused on location efficiency. A Walk Score, as well as a Bike Score and Transit Score, may be assigned to a particular address or an entire region, and the company maintains a ranking of the most walkable cities in the United States. Products for computer programmers include Travel Time API. Higher walk scores have been correlated with higher property values and lower mortgage default risk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Realtor.com</span> Real estate website

Realtor.com is a real estate listings website operated by the News Corp subsidiary Move, Inc. and based in Santa Clara, California. It is the second most visited real estate listings website in the United States as of 2021, with over 100 million monthly active users.

Trulia is an American online real estate marketplace which is a subsidiary of Zillow. It facilitates buyers and renters to find homes and neighborhoods across the United States through recommendations, local insights, and map overlays that offer details on commute, schools, churches and nearby businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherry Chris</span> American businessman

Sherry Chris is president and CEO of Expansion Brands Portfolio at Realogy Holdings Corporation, which includes Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, and ERA, divisions of Realogy Corporation.

NeighborCity was a residential real estate information and service company that rated real-estate agents in the United States, offering a way for buyers and sellers of homes to compare and evaluate agents. It was based in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Listings</span> Online real estate brokerage

Open Listings was an online real estate brokerage, focused exclusively on representing buyers. One of the stated goals of the company was to make homeownership more affordable for everyone by refunding 50% of their commission to the buyer at close, saving buyers an average of $9,604 with their 50% commission refund.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NeighborhoodScout</span>

NeighborhoodScout is a website and online database of U.S. neighborhood analytics created in 2002. The site offers neighborhood reports and a search function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compass, Inc.</span> American residential real estate broker

Compass, Inc. operates a residential real estate brokerage in the United States. It has approximately 29,000 agents, who are generally independent contractors, on its platform.

Instant buyer is a real estate transaction model wherein companies purchase residential properties directly from private sellers, to eventually re-sell them.

Opendoor Technologies Inc. is an online company that buys and sells residential real estate. Headquartered in San Francisco, it makes instant cash offers on homes through an online process, makes repairs on the properties it purchases and relists them for sale. It also provides mobile application-based home buying services along with financing. As of November 2021, the company operates in 44 markets in the US.

Matterport Inc. is an American 3D spatial mapping company that is currently headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company was founded in 2011 as a private startup and subsequently merged with a special-purpose acquisition company in 2021 to commence public trading on the Nasdaq. The current CEO is R.J. Pittman.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Redfin Corporation 2023 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. February 27, 2024.
  2. ↑ Rhodes, Elizabeth (September 26, 2004). "A sit-down, flyby real-estate overview". The Seattle Times .
  3. ↑ Stone, Brad (March 7, 2013). "Why Redfin, Zillow and Trulia Haven't Killed Off Real Estate Brokers" . Bloomberg News .
  4. ↑ "David Selinger". Entrepreneur.
  5. ↑ "Redfin raises $1.25M, names new CEO" . American City Business Journals . January 9, 2006.
  6. ↑ Lee, Timothy B. (August 10, 2015). "Redfin set out to change real estate. Then real estate changed Redfin". Vox Media .
  7. ↑ Carrns, Ann (May 1, 2012). "New Battle on Providing Real Estate Agent Performance Data" . The New York Times .
  8. ↑ SOPER, TAYLOR (June 30, 2017). "Redfin testing 'Redfin Now' service that lets it buy and resell homes directly with customers". GeekWire .
  9. ↑ Olick, Diana; Balakrishnan, Anita (July 28, 2017). "Real estate start-up Redfin surges over 44% in IPO: 'We are the Apple of real estate,' CEO says". CNBC .
  10. ↑ Zafar, Nina (June 4, 2019). "Redfin's newest online tool cuts out the buyer's agent" . The Washington Post .
  11. ↑ Clark, Patrick (July 11, 2019). "Opendoor Partners With Redfin to Expand Home-Flipping Reach" . Bloomberg News .
  12. ↑ Saric, Ivana (June 14, 2022). "Redfin laying off 8% of its staff". Axios .
  13. ↑ BEK, NATE (November 9, 2022). "Redfin to cut 13% of workforce and shut down home-flipping business RedfinNow". GeekWire .
  14. ↑ "Redfin Acquires Walk Score" (Press release). Business Wire. October 22, 2014.
  15. ↑ COOK, JOHN (October 22, 2014). "Redfin buys Walk Score, marking first acquisition in company history". GeekWire .
  16. ↑ "Redfin Completes Acquisition of RentPath for $608 Million" (Press release). PR Newswire. April 5, 2021.
  17. ↑ "Redfin Completes Acquisition of Bay Equity Home Loans for $137.8 Million" (Press release). PR Newswire. April 4, 2022.
  18. ↑ Escobar, Sabrina (January 12, 2022). "Redfin's Purchase of Bay Equity Home Loans Is 'Positive Step'". Barron's .
  19. ↑ Cook, John (May 17, 2007). "Redfin fined $50,000, shuts down home reviews". Seattle Post-Intelligencer .
  20. ↑ Johnson, Gene (October 31, 2020). "Fair housing groups sue Redfin with allegations of 'redlining' minority communities". USA Today . Associated Press.
  21. ↑ Lerner, Michele (November 2, 2020). "Housing groups sue Redfin, alleging federal discrimination violations" . The Washington Post .
  22. ↑ "A Progressive Real Estate Firm Faces Accusations of Discrimination". Bloomberg News . January 18, 2022.
  23. ↑ BISHOP, TODD (May 2, 2022). "Redfin will implement internal fair housing monitoring system in $4M legal settlement". GeekWire .
  24. ↑ "Redfin settles lawsuit alleging housing discrimination". Daily Record . Associated Press. April 29, 2022.
  25. ↑ "Redfin Wins Innovator of the Year Award From Inman News at Real Estate Connect" (Press release). PR Web. July 30, 2006. Archived from the original on August 10, 2006.
  26. ↑ Huang, Gregory T. (May 20, 2010). "Redfin, Bonanzle, TisBest Win Seattle 2.0 Awards". Xconomy .
  27. ↑ Shontell, Alyson (October 3, 2012). "The 2012 Digital 100: The Complete List 1-100". Business Insider .
  28. ↑ "Announcing: 2013 Innovator Awards winners". Bradley Inman . July 12, 2013.
  29. ↑ Horton, Nick (July 2014). "100 Best Companies to Work For 2014: Large Companies". Seattle Business Magazine.
  30. ↑ Pratini, Napala (December 13, 2019). "5 Top Employers in Seattle According to Tech Workers". Hired.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.